Walk in Vanity's Ruins
by PandaFollowsPeach
Summary: How Olaf came to meet each member of his troupe, starting with lucafont. DH owns all, not me.


He hadn't been to a carnival like this since he was a child.   
  
Throngs of people crammed together in a mass of smells and sounds, butter oil and sweat bubbling together in a sort of human soup.   
  
Heavy clouds hung above, the sort of summer evening when it was too hot to breathe, and even walking the few feet through the carnival entrance drenched Olaf in sweat.  
  
Olaf stopped and wiped his face on his sleeve. Up ahead, a massive tent painted in garish gold and red stood alone, a sort of attention grabbing eyesore in the midst of a place that was one gigantic eyesore to begin with. Standing by the tent was an immense woman with a face like a breeding sow. She grinned at Olaf, and shoved a flier into his hands.   
  
"Five dollars only! Freaks here! The alligator girl, the awe-inspiring skeleton woman! Come see the amazing seal boy, a monstrosity from birth-"  
  
He smiled to himself and handed the woman a five dollar bill, then stepped inside.   
  
A dozen or so hard metal chairs had been set up in front of a makeshift stage, and a crowd had gathered already.  
  
Onstage a pigtailed girl of thirteen or so paraded in front of the crowd in her bathing suit, showing off the scarred and puckered skin that covered her face and body.   
  
Olaf regarded her for a moment.  
  
She was young to be working at all, let alone in a freak show like this. Her blue eyes stared out from a mask of scar, empty and unafraid. She smiled at him. To even be in the presence of such a creature made Olaf feel uncomfortable, sort of itchy inside. She had no fear, but she had no fury either, no hatred for the people who came to laugh and jeer at her.   
  
For Olaf's purposes, she was not much use.   
  
As Olaf looked away, she did a wobbly handstand and then hurried off the stage.   
  
In her place a shirtless young man of nineteen or so appeared, he sat down and struggled to open a bottle of water with his feet. His head was shaved to the scalp, and even that managed to look filthy. Black brown eyes glowered out at the crowd with a look that radiated pure, unadulterated malevolence.  
  
That's my camel, for all the gold in Arabia   
  
"Fucking freaks." The man beside Olaf sneered, hurling his half-empty cup at the stage.   
  
The shirtless freak ducked, dodging the cup but slipping on the spilled soda. Without hands to catch his fall he hit the stage face first.   
  
There was a deadly silence, as the crowd waited to see if he would rise.   
  
After a long moment he did, blood streaming from his split bottom lip. Jaw clenched, he stalked off stage and into the shadow.   
  
The crowd roared in response, a cruel laughter that echoed like the barking of a mongrel dog pack, salivating over a scrap of rotten meat. Unkind was one thing but barbarous was another, these people were both.  
  
Not that it mattered to Olaf, he could use that.   
  
Feed it, nurse it. Mold that raw, indiscriminate hatred into something truly beautiful to behold. He could make him a killer.   
  
Olaf stood and quietly followed the so called alligator girl, the scarred child who had been on stage earlier. She seemed to be paying little attention to him or anybody else as she walked and gossiped with another child her age. As they approached the tents, Olaf slipped into the ever widening shadows and slid along the wall.  
  
Olaf pushed his way into the crowd of circus people and their associates, past tattooed girls and madly giggling drunks, towards the dimly lit tent he had spotted the girl entering.   
  
Somebody had scribbled on the tent flap in marker.   
  
"Lusus naturae"  
  
Olaf frowned. natural born monsters. What a sign to have on one's front door.   
  
The first thing that Olaf noticed was the smell. Heavy and acrid, like machine oil. A few wrinkled blankets lay in a corner, a makeshift nightstand made of an overturned trash can.   
  
Metal parts were scattered everywhere, a mad mixture of machinist shop and a crackwhore's bedroom.   
  
A tattered curtain hung across a corner of the room, obviously hung in an attempt to give the tent's inhabitants a little privacy.   
  
Bits of frustrated conversation drifted out from behind the curtain, the voices of the boy without hands and the alligator girl.   
  
"You need stitches."   
  
"Good, something else to make me look like a freak. Stop picking at it, Gloria!"   
  
"I'm going to stitch you up whether you like it or not, I need to get the gravel out of it first."  
  
"Goddamn it, that fucking hurts!"  
  
There was a cry of frustration as Gloria apparently gave up, and threw down her equipment.  
  
"You want it stitched, then stitch it yourself!"   
  
The curtain opened and the alligator girl stepped out, stopping to glare at Olaf.  
  
"What do you want?"  
  
"I'm here to talk to the one with no hands."  
  
"Good luck, he's impossible. Stitches, there's a visitor for you!" With that Gloria turned and stormed off.  
  
The adolescent stepped out from behind the curtain, and his posture stiffened as Olaf drew closer. "What do you want?" He asked uneasily, echoing Gloria's words.   
  
Olaf held up a hand. "I mean you no harm. I only need to talk to you for a moment."  
  
The adolescent seemed to relax a little, and he motioned Olaf to sit down.   
  
"Are you thirsty? We don't have wine or anything, but there's cold water."  
  
Olaf shook his head. "You aren't completely helpless, I take it."   
  
"It's part of the act. I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself."   
  
"Well, that's good to know," Olaf said. "The girl who was here, she's your girlfriend or something?"  
  
"Or something."  
  
"I'd never take that kind of attitude from a woman."   
  
The boy shrugged. "Beggars can't be choosers." He leaned back and closed his eyes, stretching. Olaf took the opportunity to get a look at his hands, or rather, the stumps where his hands should have been. His muscular arms tapered off in oddly rounded wrists, and Olaf realized his hands had not been amputated, rather it was as if they had never existed.   
  
Strange, Olaf wondered idly what his reaction would be, if such a creature had been handed to him and called his son. Better to hand him a still child, without breath or heartbeat. Better to receive nothing than such a dismal disappointment.   
  
He was more than a freak, he was the embodiment of two people's failures. A mother's broken heart, a father's broken dreams. What a waste.   
  
"I have a proposition for you."Olaf said.   
  
The adolescent looked down with a sly smile, idly tracing a circle in the dust with his toe.  
  
"It's twenty five for an hour. Make it an even thirty and I'll throw in a massage."  
  
Olaf opened his mouth to speak, but a roaring cry from outside the tent drew his attention away.  
  
"What is that noise?" he grumbled.   
  
Gloria poked her head into the tent.   
  
"The crowd wants an encore, what do you want me to tell them?"  
  
The adolescent frowned. "Tell them they're bastards, I don't get paid to do encores."   
  
Olaf chuckled.  
  
"You hate them, don't you?"  
  
"I hate them."  
  
"Wouldn't it be wonderful to finally have your revenge? Make all those people pay for the way they treated you, make your family pay for the way they treated you?"   
  
"I've never met my family. And Gloria won't leave." The boy said quietly. "She likes it here, don't ask me why."   
  
"We all have to make sacrifices sometimes-" Olaf lit a cigarette for the boy "-you'll just have to decide which you want more."   
  
There was a long silence.   
  
"What do I have to do?"  
  
Lucafont had never realized how beautiful a true fire was.   
  
Reaching, growing, a blinding red twisting up in tendrils to touch the azure of heaven's midnight. It was alive, glorious. The ones that had managed to flee the carnival were long gone, the ones who hadn't...He had kept an eye out for Gloria, but she was nowhere to be found, at least not anymore.  
  
He had new companions now. The two women who were to be his coworkers stood beside him, watching as the flames consumed the carnival.   
  
The taller of the two girls turned on the balls of her feet, twirling in an impromptu dance of joy as the ashes swirled up around her. The smaller one shrunk away, peeking out nervously from behind Lucafont's new trenchcoat.   
  
"It's just a fire." Lucafont said, not sure if the girl was listening, or if she could understand at all. To his surprise, she released her grip on his arm and looked him dead in the eye.   
  
"I know that, fuckhead."   
  
Lucafont blinked, and licked his sore bottom lip.   
  
These people certainly didn't qualify as normal. But-  
  
Lucafont smiled. Dr. O. Lucafont. It had a certain ring to it.  
  
It would do for now. 


End file.
